Samaritan by Richard Price Read Free Book Online

“This is great. OK, this class? Forget it. OK? Don’t even think of it as creative writing. It’s just stories. The writing assignments? Stories, telling stories . . . Can somebody wake this guy up?”
    One of the girls punched the boy Jamaal, whose forehead was resting on the table; Ray so happy now, stories his lifelong lifeline; to Ruby, to romance, to himself; stories the ballast, the crash cart, the air.
    “And the thing is, what are you, Hopewell kids? Neighborhood kids? Oh man, nobody out there knows what you know . . . And what you may think of as, as, everyday? As boring? That’s like . . . No. That’s . . . Me? When I want to read something, a book, a story, a newspaper article, I’m thinking, Time is tight, why should I read this? What does this individual have to tell to me that I don’t already know?”
    Then checking himself, something off in the message.
    “Not that what you write has to be a show-stopper, mind-boggling or, you know, ‘Can you top this?’ All I am saying, is, believe me, you’re all so much more interesting, so much more special than you might think.
    “So, every week, you’re going to write me a few pages, doesn’t have to have a beginning or an end, just some kind of snapshot, word picture, bring it in and read it to the class or I’ll read it for you and we’ll talk. Questions?”
    Jamaal, the sleeper, raised his hand. “Does spelling count?”
    The girl with the big-framed glasses, Myra, clucked her tongue in irritation.
    “Spelling is good. It’s good to have spelling.” His disappointment in the question was neutralized by this Myra; something cooking there.
    “Can we write in pencil?”
    “Pencil, pen, blood, as long as I can decipher it.”
    “Do they have to be true?”
    “Fool me. OK. You know what? What do we have left, twenty minutes? Does anybody want to kick it off and give up a story right now?”
    The immediate reaction was unilateral silence, frowny and tense.
    “Just verbal, any story.” Then, “Anything. A dream, a joke . . .”
    Not one of them would so much as meet his eye; Ray quickly coming to understand that he wouldn’t be able to pry loose a volunteer from this crew right now with blasting caps.
    “C’mon, one brave soul.”
    He gave it a perfunctory ten count, then flopped his hands onto the table. “OK, then,” his voice heavy with surrender. “You leave me no choice but to give you one of my own.”
    Off the hook for now, the class settled into their spines.
    And in this first moment of relaxed surrender to him, Ray learned something: Rashaad Macbeth loved Felicia Stevenson, the tall butterscotch-colored girl who sat directly across the table from him, but sad to say, Ray positive about this, this love was a one-way deal.
    Since the beginning of class the boy had been alternating deep scrutiny of his pen tip with throwing her quick furtive glances; thirty seconds for the pen, two seconds for Felicia; thirty and two, thirty and two, but the girl hadn’t glanced his way even once.
    “OK,” Ray began. “Here we go. Growing up, I had a cousin Jackie, my grandmother’s sister’s son, about ten years older than me. Now Jackie’s dad—his name was Stubby—was a really short guy, five-three, five-four, and Stubby had a very dark complexion and very dark eyes because he was half Russian Jew, half Guatemalan Indian, which is a whole other story in itself. Now Jackie’s older brother, Benny? He looked just like Stubby—dark skin, eyes, five foot three. The problem was that Jackie had yellow-blond hair, and by the time he was eleven? Was very close to six feet tall, and, even though Jackie’s mother was fair-skinned, Stubby had decided that the kid wasn’t his, that his wife had gotten pregnant by some other man and, that was that. And the way he dealt with it, was to freeze Jackie out. He wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t touch him, wouldn’t look at him; this little boy just didn’t exist for him. I mean